Two Years Without Her

I decided to start this blog as a kind of therapy for myself.  Most bereaved parents tend to start blogging or writing down their thoughts soon after their loss, so I feel like I’m doing this a bit backwards but I need to start somewhere.  I’m not expecting a lot of people to read it - to be honest I’m not much of a writer – but I’m doing this for myself and if another bereaved parent happens to stumble upon it and it helps them in some way, that’s a bonus.

Yes, it’s been two years since our beautiful Madelyn was taken and I’d hoped to be in a better place by now, but it’s still so hard to accept.  I know that part of that acceptance is the understanding that we will always feel her loss; that she will always be missing from our family, but that makes me so bitter and angry at times.  I miss her every minute of every day, and it upsets me knowing that my family miss her so much too, but a lot of my anger stems from the fact that she never got a chance to live.  She never got a chance to be a proper part of our family, and although I feel so sad for our loss I feel so much more sadness for her.  She deserved to be with us, she deserved to feel our love every day, and she deserved to feel safe.  She did not deserve to be taken in such a cruel way, leaving such a longing family behind.

In some ways it’s hard to believe it’s been two years since our world was turned upside down.  In other ways it feels like I’ve been trying to cope with this ache inside for a lifetime.  It feels like yesterday that we were waiting so impatiently for Madelyn to arrive, hoping every day that I’d go in to labour and we’d become that perfect family of four.  It feels like yesterday that I was standing in the birthing pool, posing for photos between contractions.  It feels like yesterday that I watched the paramedics resuscitating her on the changing table that we’d hoped would be used to change her on every day.  It feels like yesterday that we spent the most precious days in hospital holding her and getting to know her as best we could.  It feels like yesterday that we somehow managed to carry ourselves out of the hospital without her, carrying a memory box instead of our new born baby in her car seat.

I know I was a different person before losing Madelyn, but I can’t remember much of that person now.  I feel like I’ve been this new version of myself forever.  There’s no such thing as a care-free day now, and I don’t remember the last time I felt that way.  I see photos of myself before having Madelyn, but I don’t recognise myself in them.  I wish I could remember what it was like to feel so light and only look forward with excitement, but I just feel so heavy now.  If I’m thinking of something planned in our future now, instead of just being excited I usually find myself wondering how I might feel by that point, hoping that I will feel more content in myself and less consumed by grief. 

So, with her second birthday approaching we find ourselves preparing to just try and get through these few days.  I’d expected her second birthday to be easier than her first, but if I’m honest I’m finding it more difficult.  I’m not sure why that is; I really wish it wasn’t the case.  I find myself daydreaming a lot of the time, trying to imagine a two year old Madelyn.  What would her hair be like?  She had so much dark hair when she was born, would it have stayed dark or turned fair?  Would she be as chatty as her big brother was at two years old?  What would her voice sound like?  Would she be a mummy’s girl or a daddy’s girl?  What would be her favourite food?  I think about what clothes I would have liked to dress her in, taking a painful glance in the direction of the girl’s clothes as I make my way to the boy’s section in the shops.  She would have brought so much joy to our lives, I know that for sure.

I regularly find myself thinking back to the weeks and months we spent excitedly preparing for Madelyn’s arrival, blissfully unaware of how our lives would be changed forever.  We were completely unprepared for the path we suddenly found ourselves on, having to try and navigate our way through such a traumatic loss and trying to glue ourselves back together around our forever-missing piece.